Because we don't want to exclude anyone from coming, we won't charge for admission, and we won't have a membership fee, but we need to cover the £20 cost to hire the rooms, and we also need money for our projects.
We raise money by asking you to bring a raffle prize - perhaps some of us might bring a chocolate raffle prize this time? We also sell tea&coffee withabiscuit, which costs £1, and we sell our hard enamel badges for £5. We also have some copies of the late Dick Forrester's book What was an Atmospheric Railway priced only £3 - they are advertised on eBay for twice that price!

We are always looking for speakers, and for help with running this group, and with our projects. The current projects are:

Making a trail of peacocks' tails to commemorate Captain George Peacock. There will be a Dartmoor-style letterbox stamp sited near to each peacock tail. On St George's Day, 23rd April, we will sell you a trail card, and invite you to follow the trail and collect the stamps. There's a peacock's feather for the first 50 completed cards.

We are looking for a trophy or two to present to the best peacock tails - perhaps you may have an old trophy you no longer need? Or we could use a ceramic pot if it has two handles at the top.

Recreating or locating the missing Stairs Cross. Read about this project on these links:

We need someone to research the archives of Sherbourne Abbey. Perhaps we could raise enough money to fund a geophys exploration of the estuary, to see if the Stairs Cross lies buried underneath the silt. Maybe Henry V11th's men didn't destroy the cross, but merely tipped it into the estuary mud?

ARCHI, the historical search hound, has discovered 117 archaeological and historic sites within 10km of Starcross 117 archaeological sites near Starcross from ARCHIUK
Are there some enthusiasts to explore some of these sites. Which site interests you the most?

Commemorating Captain George Peacock. Captain Peacock invented the screw propeller... so let's have an enormous screw propeller with his name on it. Maybe site it on Parish Council land on The Strand? We need researchers to discover more, and someone to contact Captain Peacock's descendants to tell them what we'd like to do. Then we'll need to approach the Parish Council with our ideas.

HERE'S a link to some information about him from the Royal Museums at Greenwich. The links to the illustrations have been taken down, but they may be available elsewhere on the Royal Greenwich Museums' website HERE'S another link. This is to the information on the National Archives website

Thursday, 3 December 2015

Excerpted from The Curious Map Bookby Ashley Baynton-Williams. Out now from the University of Chicago Press.

When the first world war started in 1914, most commentators thought
that the war would be of short duration, and this was reflected in the
relatively light-hearted caricature maps issued in the first months of
the war. By the second year, when the true scale of the conflict became
apparent, such propaganda maps took on an altogether darker tone.

Hark! Hark! The Dogs Do Bark!, published by G. W. Bacon,
depicts the principal protagonists as dogs. The stereotypes are as
familiar today as then: the British bulldog, the French poodle, and the
German dachshund. Serbia, however, is depicted as wasps, stinging the
Austrian mongrel. North of the British Isles is a puppet master in naval
garb (sometimes said to be Winston Churchill, at the time first lord of
the admiralty) who is gradually moving Royal Navy ships on station to
blockade Germany by sea.

Walter Lewis Emanuel (1869–1915) contributed the descriptive text
outside the lower border; he was a famous English humorist, known for
his contributions to the magazine Punch and for a series of anthropomorphic dog books such as The Dogs of War (published in 1906 and reprinted in 1913), which was illustrated by the artist Cecil Aldin (1870–1935). Emmanuel’s text reads:

The Dogs of War are loose in Europe, and a nice noise they
are making! It was started by a Dachshund that is thought to have gone
mad – though there was so much method in his madness that this is
doubtful. [Note for the ignorant: The German for Dog is Hund. The
English for German in Hun. Dachshunds means badger-dog – and he is
sometimes more badgered than he likes.] Mated with the Dachshund, for
better or for worse, was an Austrian Mongrel. By the fine unwritten law
of Dogdom big dogs never attack little ones. There are, however,
scallywags in every community, and, egged on by the Dachshund for
private ends, the Mongrel started bullying a little Servian. And then
the fat was in the fire, for the little Servian had a great big friend
in the form of a Russian Bear, and he stood up for his pal. And that was
what the Dachshund wanted. He hoped that a big row would ensue, and in
the confusion he intended to steal a bone or two that he had had his eye
on. The Dachshund now began to look round for friends, but they seemed
strangely scarce. He had relied on an Italian Greyhound, a thoroughbred,
named Italia, but Italia dissembled her love in the strangest way, and
asserted that War was a luxury which she could not afford just now [...]
The Dachshund, to his annoyance, found only one friend, and that was a
dog of Constantinople. ...Meanwhile the rest of the European Happy
Family looked on, and who shall say how the row will spread? There’s the
Greek with his knife ready to take a slice of Turkey; there are the
Balkans determined not to be baulked of their own little ambitions;
there’s the Spaniard fond of Bull fighting so long as he is not a John
Bull; there’s the Portugee just spoiling for a scrap; there’s the Swiss
suffering from cold feet; there’s the Dutchman... All this, and more,
may be seen depicted above. Search well and you will find many things.
But not Peace. Peace has gone to the Dogs for the present – until a
satisfactory muzzle has been found for that Dachshund. Meanwhile the
Dachshund’s heart bleeds for Belgium – and his nose for Great Britain.

It is interesting to note that a German copy of the map was published
in Hamburg early in 1915, presumably in an attempt to highlight and
discredit the perceived self-interest of British war aims. It is also
interesting to speculate on the market for such a map, originally sold
for a shilling (5p); the image is child-oriented, and it may be that the
map was aimed at parents and schools as a tool to explain the
background to the conflict. When handled in the house or classroom, the
maps would have been easily damaged, which explains their relative
rarity today.

Ashley Baynton-Williams is an antiquarian map dealer and researcher based in London and the author of several books.

Mosaics and Horses. Wednesday March 14th 7:30pm in St Paul's Church

The next meet of Starcross History will be on Wednesday March 14th at 7:30pm in St Paul's. No entry fee and no membership fee. PLEASE BRING A RAFFLE PRIZE. Alma Harding and Joanne Bickel will lead a Mosaic Workshop; to make mosaics to mark a Starcross History Trail. Where else could the trail go? What else could it commemorate? Add tesserae to our mosaics. Or design your own - you'll need a base for your mosaic (a piece of wood or something else), some cut tiles and some waterproof tile cement. We also invite you to make Horses from Rubbish, for our 2018 entry into the Teignmouth TRAIL.Phone Starcross 890650 to find out more and book your table.This meet will also be the AGM. Copies of our constitution and the chair's report will be available. Might there be volunteers for committee rôles?

Crowdfunding: £10,000 for St Paul's Church Bells

We have been told that the hangings that hold the bells in place are now in need of replacing. We do not have the choice of doing nothing as they will only deteriorate more over time.

We would like to commemorate the end of the First World War with the Ringing out for Peace event that will be a part of the Battle's Over: A Nation's Tribute on 11th November 2018. If we have no bells, we won't be able to!

We are a small congregation in St. Paul's and we will struggle to raise this sort of money just amongst ourselves. However, we feel that the Church is an important part of the wider community and the bells are a very tangible sign of that. Please help us to return the sound of well tuned bells back to our community.

We sell our enamel badges for £5

Buy online, at one of our events, in the Westbank charity shop in Starcross, or in Crafters, Queen St, Dawlish

Thankyou for visiting Starcross History

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